My interactive destination
I aspire to work in the healthcare sector or with Health 2.0 solutions to improve patient outcomes. However, I’m also open to opportunities in other sectors or a digital agency, particularly if I can create altruistic value, as well as revenue. My key goal is to work for a progressive but ethical organization that promotes a strategic approach to innovation, with a user-centred focus.
I want to be a digital strategist who conceives end-to-end interactive strategies that meet users’ needs and engages them to meet specific goals across web, mobile, social platforms and possibly more as the IOT evolves. To become proficient at this, I want to first hone effective skills for defining the narrative and content that guides users through these strategies. More than anything I want to work with teams that support a best practice approach to user-centred design and value interactive narratives with diverse elements, from sliders to games.
What I can bring on-board
During the past eight months, I’ve discovered new disciplines, such as UX design, interactive strategy and narrative, video production and learned new skills, such as wireframing, prototyping, usability testing and video editing, with a range of tools. I’ve also acquired new best practices to build on my content strategy, project management, analytics, social media marketing, business, Photoshop and HTML/CSS mark-up skills. In some cases, I’ve also learned valuable lessons on how to position existing skills, such as user path development and content audits, that I didn’t recognize as marketable.
I can also offer transferable skills from earlier careers, such as strategic planning, presentation development/delivery, copywriting, marketing, financial literacy, strategic communications, technical writing and diverse software skills.
I think my interactive strengths lie in: end-to-end interactive narrative and content strategy development; social media marketing; and possibly analytics. I think I’m particularly good at deciphering needs, identifying gaps or opportunities and explaining/presenting concepts. I also have a strong grasp of UX design, usability testing, wireframing and graphic design. And when needed, I can use basic HTML/CSS skills or troubleshoot software to create a quick fix or workaround.
On-boarding for the first sail in the field
I want to attain a field placement in small agency or private organization with a strong digital focus. I think a small organization will give me a better grasp of how digital divisions work together and might offer more hands-on opportunities at varied tasks. At this point, I’m pursuing a placement at a diverse, entertainment start-up with an innovative team.
My top learning priorities for my placement are to take part in: user needs identification (possibly personas and user paths); strategy sessions; narrative and interactive content development; analytics and maybe even wireframing. It would also be wonderful to participate in script writing or video production but these are passions versus priorities.
I understand my potential field placement organization needs help with a crowd-funding campaign, supported by social media. Although I’ve never crowdfunded, I have run social campaigns and would be happy to help with these fundraising tactics, as long as I don’t forfeit my top priorities.
At the end, I hope to discover some new digital best practices or cautions, a clearer understanding of my value proposition to the interactive field and a real world addition or two for my portfolio. I think my biggest challenges will be keeping my focus on interactive digital tasks and trying not to achieve mammoth results in 315 hours.
Interactive4Good 